Personality Disorders

Personality consists of the well-established patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving that make up individual character. PD (Personality Disorder) is diagnosed when these patterns deviate markedly from the expectations of a particular culture in at least two of the following areas: our thoughts – that is, how we make sense of other people, ourselves, and everyday events – our emotions – how intense, changeable and appropriate they appear to be – the way we relate to other people, and how able we are to control our impulses. PD sufferers complain of feeling alone and isolated, of having difficulty making and maintaining relationships, and of trusting other people. They have relatively high rates of self-harming and suicide attempts. To establish a firm diagnosis, however, their personality pattern must range across a number of situations, be resistant to change, and have been evident since at least late adolescence. Continue reading →

It’s a pretty familiar trope in Hollywood: somebody suffers from “multiple personalities,” gets into scrapes when one does something the other doesn’t know about, or, in the case of M. Night Shyamalan’s new flick Split, has over 20 separate “personalities” in the body of James McAvoy, all of which appear to be involved in the kidnapping of teenage girls. But how true is this depiction of what is, at root, a very contentious disorder with a slightly bizarre history? The answer, in short, is “not very”. For one, multiple personality disorder has been reclassified as “dissociative personality disorder,” and for another, it’s got a lot more subtlety than people usually give it credit for. And that’s when psychologists aren’t arguing about whether it even exists. It’s a complicated disorder. Continue reading →

Despite its rampancy, there is much too little known about Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and how it could affect thousands of lives.

The occurrence of DID — formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder — can be traced back to the early 16th Century. Since then, the disorder has frequently been toyed with in movies such as Raising Cane, Secret Window and cult classic Fight Club but rarely understood. In fact, experts argue that the portrayal of DID as per the film world has been in stark contrast to its actual nature. There is still much to be learned and understood about it before one can separate DID from the stigma surrounding mental illnesses in general. Continue reading →